EDITORIAL: Drunken Russian Killers

When a TU-134 jet went down in Petrozavodsk, Russia on June 20th this year, some people (the Russian government included) wanted to blame the aging plane itself. Now, they own the poor plane an apology.

The 47 Russians who lost their lives on that flight were not killed by the plane, nor were they killed by any “evil” Chechen terrorist. They were killed by a fellow Russian, the navigator of the plane Aman Atayev. He was drunk at the wheel.

So even if the passengers had been flying in a brand new Boeing aircraft made in America with the latest technology, they still would not have been safe. Atayev’s mother says he turned to drinking as a result of his recent divorce, yet another omnipresent Russian social ill. She says so as if he were somehow the innocent victim of that divorce, but in fact one Russian man murders his wife every forty minutes, so it’s quite likely he brutalized his wife emotionally or physically or both, and that’s why she left him.

Bogus orders given by the drunken Atayev directly caused the plane to drop out of the sky. And the incident was hardly an aberration in Russia. As the Moscow Times reports: “The committee’s report sheds light on why Russian airlines are the world’s most deadly this year, surpassing the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, with 119 deaths in eight fatal crashes, including this month’s crash that killed most of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team.”

Russia is such a basket case of a country that it’s actually possible to imagine that Kremlin made up the story about the navigator being drunk to hide the fact that Russian planes are mechanically unsafe and unsalvageable, in order to avoid more widespread panic. If the pilot is blamed, then maybe the Kremlin can just crack down and save lives.

But if the Kremlin thinks so, it is out of its mind. Russia can no more control its drunkenness than it can control its winters, and drunk pilots mean nobody is safe on any plane, no matter how modern or foreign-made.

Incidents of drunken flying are legion in Russia. The MT continues:

Drunken crew members have tarnished the safety and reputation of Russian airlines in recent years. In 2009, an S7 pilot was removed from a flight from Germany on suspicion of being drunk.

Later that year, an Aeroflot pilot was removed from a New York-bound plane in Moscow after passengers, including socialite Ksenia Sobchak, accused him of being drunk. The airline later said tests revealed no signs of intoxication and the pilot might have suffered a stroke.

The Investigative Committee confirmed last year that a drunken pilot was to blame for the 2008 crash of anAeroflot-Nord 737 jet in Perm that killed all 88 people on board.

And Russia’s Kremlin KGB rulers are also drunk at the switch. They have done nothing to make Russia’s skies safer, instead they have ignored the problem until after each spectacular crash, and then they mumble about criminal charges. Russia has invited the world to Sochi in 2014 for the Olympic Games. How many visitors will make it out of Russia alive?

50 responses to “EDITORIAL: Drunken Russian Killers”

With all due respect, we’re not racists. When we say “Russian” we refer to a nationality, not a race. We don’t see what ethnicity has to do with this. If you think “ethnic Russians” drink less and do less harm, you’re nuts. They drink more and do more.

If you have a US citizenship and you were born outside of the US you are not an American. You are whatever your blood is.

If I’m a Serbian who came to the US at 16 and got a US passport, it doesn’t make me an American. It makes me a Serbian with an American citizenship.

Aman Ataev sounds Dagestani, Chechen or Turkmenistani or whatever. There is nothing Russian about this man. Russian = ethnic Slav.

I’m of an Italian descent. My parents were born in Australia and so was I. My nona and nono were Italians. I consider myself an Australian with an Italian ancestry. If I was born in Italy and grew up there but then immigrated to Australia, I would consider myself an Italian with an Australian citizenship.

If a Nigerian born individual has Russian citizenship, it doesn’t make him Russian. It makes him a Nigerian with Russian citizenship. If being an immigrant automatically turns someones’ years of bloodlines in places like Canada, America or Australia (because there’s no such a thing as American, Canadian or Australian unless you’re a native and seeing how all 3 are native lands that were raped and pillaged by the Anglo-Saxon kind) it doesn’t mean the rule applies to other countries.

If you’re a Persian who immigrated to Italy, it doesn’t make you an Italian. You’re still a Persian. If you’re a Turk that went to Sweden, it doesn’t make you a Swede. You’re still a Turk. You get the idea.

If you were born in a country, the argument gains some validity but if you’re from somewhere else, it doesn’t change your ancestry just because you gained a new citizenship. You can be an American, a Russian, a Canadian, a Brit CULTURALLY if you’ve lived there for awhile or if you were born here. But if your parents are Indian, racially you’re not a Russian or an American. You’re an INDIAN, FFS.

Did I hit a nerve? Anglo-Saxons have done heaps more raping and pillaging worldwide than Italians have. Italians haven’t even done the 1/10th of what the good ol’ whites did.

And yeah, you Yanks definitely have an extremely weird definition of what is an American. Perhaps it’s why most of the world has trouble understanding you and your logic. To me, a Pakistani immigrant in America will never be an American. He’ll remain a Pakistani with an American citizenship. Until perhaps 3 or more generations in, where they have been mixed and matched with others.

American = Native Indian or a mash-up of bloodlines, aka a mutt.

I’m sorry but in Europe, a natural Swede, Italian, Greek, Dane, German etc will laugh you out of the country if you imply that an Angolan, Egyptian, Sri Lankan, Korean all of a sudden turned into a Swede, an Italian, German etc just by obtaining a passport.

On October 22, 1721, the ever-expanding Muscovite state was officially renamed into the Russian Empire and its people were called Russians instead of the earlier known names that the world knew them by “Moscovites”, “Moskali” and “Moscvyny.”

Aussie tosser, Did you forget the Romans?
Of course, the Italians I met in Melbourne who did not consider themselves Australian after getting citizenship were, like you, pretty thick.

Now about the Italian persecutions and massacres during WW2?
You were a bunch of fascists then, and acted accordingly in Greece and Yugoslavia, killing huge numbers of civilians on behalf of your Nazi mates.
Then there were the outright genocides against the Ethiopians in the 30’s, where you dropped mustard gas on civilians, Libya where you poisoned wells, etc etc etc.

And your racism is fairly obvious, you must be like your mafia idol Berlusconi….

Well, most Americans don’t share these views. To us, both Kissinger and Schwarzenegger are 100% full fledged Americans, with their accents and all. We don’t analyze blood lines nor do we evaluate the size or a shape of a person’s skull.

I guess it is different in Australia unless this point of view is strictly your own

I don’t know if this is a prevailing view in Australia or just your personal view, but please don’t speak for Americans. Whoever is a U.S. citizen, whether natural born or naturalized, is a 100% American. Neither the law nor society makes any distinctions in treating these two classes of U.S. citizens. For most Americans the place of origin makes no difference. Even speaking with a heavy accent is not always a problem. Just remember Kissinger.

Of course, there is an exception that one must be natural born to become President or Vice President, but that’s all. We have had naturalized citizens serving as Secretaries of State, Supreme Court members, Senators, and so on.

LR, I believe you should never say “race” when you actually mean “ethnicity”. Saying “race” here makes you actually look very, er, American. In the worst sense of the word. Which is, badly educated, at least.

In a world outside of US, there is no such “races” as Russians, French, English, or Han. Even what you called “Hispanics” is not a “race” – surprise-surprise:)

In the American English usage, the words “race” and “ethnicity” are commonly used interchangeably, but nationality is synonymous with citizenship. When a special emphasis is made on race, the word “color” is often used, and when a special emphasis is made on ethnicity, the expression “national origin” is used sometimes. I bet they don’t teach this in the KGB Academy, do they?

This is about the English language, so please don’t presume you can teach a native speaker such as LR how to make a proper word selection in a language that is foreign to you. She does not lecture you on what Russian words to use.

RV, it’s not about English, dear, it’s about usage of right terms in the right place. Race has nothing in common with ethnonyms like “Russians”, “French” or “Han”. Try to find a single document in the internets that speaks of “Russian race” and then say “race” means “ethnicity”, ok? That’s exactly how our smart author used the word.

Yes, it’s about using right terms and you, not being a native speaker of English, are not in a position to know which terms are right and which are not.

Just trust me, as I said, the word race and ethnicity are often used interchangeably by Americans, particularly in informal or colloquial contexts. In fact, a classic dictionary definition of race is “a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock.”

Don’t argue with people who know about the subject that you should study not teach..

With all due respect, Dear, a navigator on an airplane was a necessity 60 years ago, when you had to fly around pressure patterns over the ocean to have enough fuel to make it to destination…I have flown for 50 years and never met one…heard about the wonderful job they did, but no thanks, I can do my own navigation…a navigator on board just prove that you Popofs live on a different planet.
The only effect he could have is if attacked the pilots with the crash axe…dont laugh, it happened in the cockpit of a Federal Express DC-10 cargo plane.

Yes, this also struck me like something very antiquated. Navigators? I thought they went extinct, much rotary phones and home ice delivery. Was it an unpressurized plane of the WWII vintage? They certainly needed a navigator then, to find a target to be bombed in Berlin or Tokyo.

Haven’t they heard of an automatic pilot device used throughout the world for at least 50 years?.

Reviewing the accident report, Atayev talkativeness only reflect his normal concern about the two pilot’s incompetence. It is normal that a co–pilot
is fairly inexperienced and it is extremely anormal that the captain do not assert control in such a tight situation. Atayev had nothing to do with the crash…had I been in his place, I would have killed the two cretins up front and landed the damn thing…but slavs being slavs, they all three submitted like muslims to circumstances until they plowed into the ground!

The point being here that due to centuries of slavery, slavs submit, always, just like muslims…this crew submitted to the captain’s incompetence.
The co-pilot was clearly unable to handle the airplane but he obeyed the order to try, even if it killed everybody…Atayev if he’d been sober would have said nothing, but because he was drunk, almost revolted from his coming demise. But all this is a big secret…nobody want to question why the Russians dont revolt against their coming demise at the hand of Vlad “the impaler” Putin…

If he had Russian citizenship he is Russian, not an ethnic Russian but still a Russian. However, ethnic Slavic Russians such as Dmitry are well known as some of the most racist people in history, with a ethno-cultural tradition of discrimination and violence against ethnic minorities.

Those in Russia who are not racist tend to be citizens of mixed or non Slavic descent.

Listen Dtard, you always describe non Russians as inferior, you frequently espouse racist Russian propaganda, and you support a party that has “Russia for Russians” as its slogan.

As for the track record of Georgian presidents, well Gamsakhurdia was the man who introduced 50% guaranteed seats in the Abkhazian parliament for the minority Apsu who were 17% of the population, while the current president offered a Federal arrangement where the Abkhaz/Apsua would elect a vice president of the entire Georgian state with veto rights over all government policy relating to Abkhazia, this means the vice president would represent less than 2% of the population.

The current president recently received the top Armenian state award for his efforts to integrate and improve the situation of Armenians in society and government.

As for lying, no I leave that up to a depraved little racist pig such as yourself, one who dreams of a Russian empire and revels in the deaths and sufferings of non Slaves.

Dmitry, you are a worthless little piece of rubbish, and I congratulate you on your showing the monstrous nature of the average supporter of Putin.

“Listen Dtard, you always describe non Russians as inferior, you frequently espouse racist Russian propaganda, and you support a party that has “Russia for Russians” as its slogan.”

Soon Misha himself will say you’re good at lying.

Three lies in one paragraph, and even inventing a “party I support” is something incredible.

Track of records of Georgian presidents is simple – none of them came to power through legal transition od the post from the previous president. Each one started a war. That’s enough to characterise a nation, and it’s politics.

So to conclude this thought…this guy Aman Atayev or whatever his name is, may culturally be Russian, depending on how long he has lived there, but racially, he sounds like he’s either from Kavkaz or Turkmenistan. He doesn’t sound slavic whatsoever. Most likely a muslim. How do you know he didn’t do it purposely? Maybe it was his plan all along to take down a plane full of citizens. Either way, we’ll never know.

For your information, I am Jewish, and my ancestors came to America from Eastern Europe two generations ago, so your shot against “Anglo-Saxons” is misdirected. I have no Anglos or Saxons in my family tree.

And perhaps we do have “an extremely weird definition of what is an American” but please do let us Americans decide how we define these things for ourselves. To you, “a Pakistani immigrant in America will never be an American” but not to us, and with all due respect we don’t give a rat’s ass what your opinion on this is. We do have a shameful history of racism and now most people don’t want that anymore.

I would like to ask a few other Australians and maybe Kiwis who regularly post here to comment. Is this worldview common in AU and NZ?

RV, honestly, whatever you do, nation-states are much stronger than multiethnic states. With all due respect, when thousands protest against an islamic center in Manhattan, or when a US preacher burns Quaran, or when a US president orders to kill a mullah, this does not happen because Pakistanis in America are true Americans. So, you are being hypocritical – once again.

We will all going to live in very multinational countries soon, yes, that’s true. But it is very naive to think that this does not bring any new problems, and that people from absolutely different culture are just the same as people who were born and raised in the country.

Certainly diversity has its problems, I agree; however, this does not mean that people should be classified by the place of their birth. Nation-state is a European idea, and we are not Europeans and don’t want to be.

People born outside the U.S. who later naturalized are exactly the same politically and economically. They are not the same right away culturally speaking, it’s true, even immigrants from Canada or England are a little different in the beginning. It takes some time to assimilate; but after a few years they are more and more so, and their children are already indistinguishable.

And yes, persons of Pakistani descent and every other group are true Americans; and their houses of worship are open everywhere.

Firstly, nation state is also an Asian and African idea. And in the Americas, pretty much nobody had a chance to build a nation-state from the beginning. But every nation was still built “around” one or several leading cultures.

Though the US try to be a melting pot, like any empire tried to be in history, you forget that there are some ethnicities that resist this melting very successfully – truly religious Jews being one of them. Same true about Han Chinese, that live in Chinatowns around the world, and have no wish to dissolve in the native nations. Same with African Americans – they still exist as such, which means they don’t mixed much throughout history of the country.

When you say “their houses of worship are open”, of course you know that you play cunning – minarets are prohibited in Switzerland, burkas are banned in France, and people protest against islamic center in Manhattan (and you have a negligible number of Muslims in your country, compared to the modern Europe). And this all is just one religion. What’s worse, this interethnic and inter-religious strain is growing.

When you say “exactly the same politically and economically”, you also play cunning. You know people of Latin-American descent are underrepresented politically, just like blacks are. I would expect Muslims are just as much underrepresented, though I don’t have numbers to prove it.

Don’t try to substitute the topic! You know very well I was talking about the United States, not about Europe, when I wrote that the mosques are open. They may have problems with minarets and burqas in Switzerland or France, but not here. We are not the French or the Swiss and don’t wish to be. Come to America and you’ll see with your own eyes thousands of women wearing burqas and minarets in many major cities. Of course, I know you wouldn’t come since you hate us so much, but that’s your choice.

And if you say there is inter-religion or ethnic strain in the U.S. and that it is growing, then prove it. I don’t see it. About that Islamic center in Manhattan, you don’t know what you are talking about. They protest against construction on a very specific spot; nobody has any problem with construction a few blocks away.

RV, now, really, should we go into details of how life differs for Christians and “turban-heads” in the States? For “whites” and “border-hoppers”? “Groids” and “romanists”? “Kikes” and “fags”? Don’t you see that existence of all these words proves existence of discrimination?

Racism is chauvinism taken to extremes. Hundred years ago it was virtually a religion for white people, it justified the Slav’s conquest and extermination of everybody east…same in America, 20 million natives where exterminated in the name of the “White Man Burden(!)”.
Nowadays, it is the reverse, the white people have taken the burden of exterminating themselves and 99% of neo-nazis are black…see Looee Farrakhan preaching the extermination of “White Devils” and being idolized by the Muslim world, who forget that Mohamed bragged of having a “Milk White Skin” and dragged into slavery and murder 300 million Africans!

To get back on topic, it is notable for a pilot that Atman Ataev did nothing special but DID protest the incompetence of the two pilots up front…Had he been sober, he would have died quietly like a regular Slav, who as a nation have been slave stock to the Vikings, then beasts of burden to the Golden Horde of the Mongols, then Serfs to the Kzars and their minions,
Servile for a millenia…only when drunk russians act free!

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